Sylvester started to stand. The Luidaeg looked at him, narrow-eyed and silent, and he sat back down. I’d have to thank her for that later.
If anyone else noticed the three of us making our quick, quiet escape, they didn’t say anything. I didn’t know the layout of the knowe as well as I would have liked, but I knew knowes in general, and I knew there were always multiple ways out of a room. In the end, all we had to do was follow the servants to find our way to a narrow door in the corner near the balcony windows, half-hidden by tapestries. We slipped through. The door closed behind us, and we were in a quiet, well-lit hallway, with no shouting nobles or risk of flying food.
Quentin looked at me. “Next time, can we be out of town when something like this happens? Like, in another Kingdom or something?”
“Next time, I will take you to Disneyland,” I said. “Karen, you okay?”
“Sure.” She laughed unsteadily. “That was sort of like being in someone else’s nightmare, only no one was naked, and there were no lobsters on the walls.”
“Come on, you two,” I said. “Let’s see if we can find the kitchen and get a replacement dinner.”
We walked along the silent hall, Karen still holding my hand, Quentin following slightly behind us, like he was guarding the rear. It would have been nice, if not for the omnipresent fear that we’d be found and dragged back to the banquet hall. I was pretty sure Arden was letting the nobles shout themselves into exhaustion. Her years working retail at the bookstore must have taught her a few things about crowd control.
The hall ended in a redwood door carved with moths. We stopped, looking at each other, before I shrugged and pushed the door open, revealing a small balcony. Three tables were set up there. One held three plates of spaghetti and meatballs, a large basket of bread, and a pitcher of what looked like sparkling lemonade. Raj was already seated in one of the chairs, slurping down spaghetti like it was about to be made illegal.
The second table had no occupants, but held a wide assortment of desserts. The third had a large tea tower covered in sandwiches, scones, and small, savory pastries. All three of us stopped again, this time blinking at the scene in front of us.
“As it turns out, no one takes offense when a King of Cats declares the anger of the Divided Courts to be misaimed and leaves until they can stop acting like children,” purred a voice behind me. “Or perhaps they do take offense, and simply don’t bother to say anything, as I’m not worthy of being scolded by my betters. Regardless, the kitchen staff sends their regards, and hopes you’ll enjoy your meal.”
I dropped Karen’s hand as I turned. Tybalt was behind me. He offered a small, almost shy smile, revealing the pointed tip of one incisor.
“Did you miss me?” he asked.
I punched him in the arm.
Tybalt raised his eyebrows. “I see.” He looked past me to Quentin. “Did she miss me?”
“I’m pretty sure she’s going to murder you,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to help.”
“Ah.” Tybalt sighed as he returned his attention to my face. “I told you I couldn’t arrive with you. I told you I had to stand as a King, and not as an accessory to one of their own.”
“Funny,” I said. “You didn’t tell me you weren’t going to speak to me for a week beforehand. I figured you’d have to ignore me once we got here, but before? I understand politics, I do, but ash and oak, Tybalt, that was a little much to drop on a girl without some kind of warning.” I punched him again, not as hard this time. My anger was fading, replaced by relief.
To his credit, he bore my unhappiness with a small nod and a mild, “You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that. But there aren’t really precedents for this sort of event. Most Kings of Cats will never have the opportunity to remind the High King of their domain of their existence, much less do so in such a plain and evident fashion.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “Where’s Shade?” Shade was the Queen of Cats who had dominion over the Berkeley area. I’d only met her once, and she’d remained in her feline form for the entire time, but she’d seemed nice enough.
“She’ll be joining us tomorrow, after my nephew has gone home,” said Tybalt, offering me his arm. “Since my domain corresponds to the seat of Arden’s Kingdom, we knew that only I would be welcome at the high table, and it was important I be seated there, to make the point that my Court is an equal partner in this discussion. Shall we sit?”
“We shall,” I said, taking his arm. Quentin and Karen, looking relieved, made for the table where Raj was waiting. I grinned as I watched them go. “It was good of you to make sure the kids got a second dinner.”
“I knew as soon as that man,” Tybalt’s nose wrinkled, “started shouting about mixed-bloods and inheritance that you’d be making your escape sooner rather than later, and further, I knew there was no way you’d go without your charges. Honestly, I’m just relieved you managed to escape without bringing your entire table along.” He took his arm away from mine in order to pull my chair out.
I settled into it, flashing him a quick smile. Tybalt smiled back, his own relief painted clearly across his features. His position had been as bad as mine was, maybe worse: I had to worry about my fiancé rejecting me, but he had to worry about the political status of his entire race. What he did here, he did for all Cait Sidhe, not just for the Court of Dreaming Cats. Maybe he could have handled things better—absolutely he could have handled things better—but I couldn’t blame him for a few small missteps. Just like always, we were standing on uncharted ground.
“How did you arrange all this?” I asked.
He settled into the chair across from mine, picking up the pitcher and pouring us each a glass of dark, faintly fizzing liquid that smelled of blackcurrants and roses. “As I said, the kitchen staff sends their regards. You’re well liked in this court, although I couldn’t for the life of me say why, insufferable creature that you are.”
“I thought you liked me insufferable,” I said, reaching for my glass.
Tybalt put his hand over mine and smiled. There was nothing but fondness in his eyes.
“My dearest October, I adore you insufferable,” he said.
I laughed, and for the first time since this conclave had been announced, I started to feel like things were going to be all right.
EIGHT
WE SPENT AN HOUR or so out on the balcony, eating slowly, enjoying the night air. I was enjoying the absence of the nobility—well, except for Tybalt, Raj, and Quentin, which really meant that I was enjoying the absence of annoying nobility—even more. The teenagers finished their spaghetti and made a raid on our tea tower, taking half the scones back to their table. I threw a wadded-up napkin at them, and they laughed, and everything was perfect.
That alone should have told me it couldn’t last. The air rippled and Sir Grianne of Shadowed Hills was suddenly sitting on the balcony rail. Her Merry Dancers spun in the air around her. Like King Antonio, she was sketched in shades of gray. Unlike him, her skin was ash and her hair was granite, striated in bands of dark and light. Also unlike him, she was wearing simple livery: a tunic in the blue and gold of Shadowed Hills and a sash around her waist in the silver and purple of Arden’s household.
“Grianne,” I said. “I didn’t know you were here.”
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug, like my ignorance was none of her concern. “On loan,” she said.
Candela tend to be short-spoken, preferring to communicate through pulses of light and the motion of their Merry Dancers, the glowing orbs that accompanied them everywhere from birth onward. Grianne exemplified her race. I waited several seconds, and no further details were offered.
Right. “Did you need something?” I asked.
“The conclave is resuming,” she said, her voice thin and reedy as the wind through the trees. “Your presence is requested by the High King.”
“I gue
ss that’s our cue.” I stood. Quentin and Karen did the same. I started to turn toward Tybalt, but stopped as the smell of pennyroyal and musk tickled my nose, carried to me by the light midnight wind. He was already gone. So was Raj. It made sense: they hadn’t left the gallery with us, so they couldn’t exactly return with us without making the declaration of allegiance that Tybalt had been trying so hard to avoid. I understood the necessity, but it still bothered me.
Quentin put a hand on my shoulder. I didn’t have to look down when I turned to meet his eyes. That bothered me, too, but in a different way. He was growing up. He wasn’t going to need me much longer. He already didn’t need me in the way he had, once, when he’d been trying to muddle his way through puberty and I’d been the one who was willing to restock the fridge and let him crash on my couch. Everything was changing, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go sit through more political screaming.”
There was a flash of greenish-white light as Grianne toppled backward off the railing and was gone. Sometimes I feel like we hang out with too many teleporters.
It didn’t take long to walk back to the dining room where we’d been served our first, abandoned dinner. It was empty. The tables had been cleaned, and the lights were turned down low, presumably so no one would get confused and try to come here for the conclave. There was a strange sound as we stepped through the door, like the distant rustle of skeleton leaves, or the beating of a thousand autumn leaf wings on the wind. My heart dropped into my stomach. I knew that sound. It stopped almost instantly, but it was too late. I’d already heard it.
I stopped and spread my arms, keeping Quentin and Karen from moving forward. They were good kids. Better yet, they had both known me long enough that when I indicated that I needed them to stay where they were, they froze immediately.
“What is it?” asked Quentin.
“That sound,” I said. “Did you hear it? When we first came in.”
“Dead leaves,” he said. “The whole place is decorated in redwoods. There’s going to be some settling, especially when there’s no one talking to cover it up.”
“Redwoods don’t have leaves, you doof,” said Karen. “They’re evergreens.”
“Just stay here, both of you.” I stepped forward, wishing I’d been allowed to bring my knife; wishing I wasn’t walking, unarmed, into a large, empty dining hall where I’d heard—or thought that I’d heard—the beating of the night-haunts’ wings. It hadn’t been loud enough to have placed them in this room. They were approaching. But why?
Something crunched underfoot. I glanced down to be sure that it was neither glass nor bone, and saw that I’d stepped on what looked like the shell of some large egg. Nothing to worry about, then. I resumed my forward progress, and stopped again as something else crunched. This time, I knelt and picked up a piece of what I’d stepped on.
It was thin, curved, and brittle as an old snail’s shell, colored like carnival glass and patterned with thin whorls and swirls, as distinctive as a fingerprint. I frowned, trying to figure out where I had seen this before, and why it looked so familiar.
The answer came to me on the beating of the night-haunts’ wings, still distant, still impossible to ignore. I was holding the shell of a broken Merry Dancer.
I was holding proof that King Antonio Robertson of Angels was dead.
“Stay where you are, kids,” I said, staring at the broken shell in my hand. “Quentin, I know you’ve been working on illumination spells. Can you throw me a globe of witch-light please?” Casting a spell inside Arden’s knowe might be enough to get her attention, or at least the attention of a member of her staff. That wouldn’t be a bad thing. This wasn’t the sort of situation that I could handle on my own.
“Okay,” said Quentin. He murmured something incomprehensible. The scent of heather and steel washed over the room and a globe of light appeared above me. It looked distressingly like one of Antonio’s Merry Dancers, before they had been broken, save for the fact that it didn’t dance or weave; it just hung there, casting a cool white light over everything below it.
Thin, glittering shards littered the floor, like someone had smashed a giant Christmas ornament. The point of impact was somewhere ahead of me. I started gingerly forward, careful to avoid as many of the shards as possible. I didn’t want to destroy the evidence before I’d had a chance to really look at it. Quentin’s ball of witch-light caught on the shards, making them easier to see.
After five steps, I found King Antonio.
He was sprawled in a way that mostly hid his body under one of the dining tables; if not for the shards of Merry Dancer scattered everywhere, it would have been easy to write him off as a shadow cast by the intersection of curtain and wall. With Quentin’s mage-light to brighten the scene, and the curved shell in my hand, it was impossible for me to pretend he was anything but what he was. A corpse.
The night-haunts hadn’t arrived yet. We’d interrupted them before they could descend and devour the evidence. That was a good thing, in a way; it’s easier to examine a body when there actually is one. I knelt, looking carefully at what had once been King Antonio Robinson of Angels. It wasn’t hard to guess what killed him. Purebloods can be difficult to kill, but on the whole, a rosewood spike through the chest will stop virtually any of us where we stand. His eyes were open, staring in silent horror at the table above him.
“Huh,” I said.
On the other side of the room, Karen gasped. It was a squeak of a sound, barely worthy of the name, but it was enough to warn me. I went still, just before the tip of a sword was laid against the back of my neck.
Please be Lowri, I thought, and said, “Hi. Who’s about to decapitate me?”
“October, why are you kneeling over the body of a dead king?” Lowri sounded more puzzled than angry. That wasn’t going to last. “What have you done?”
“Nothing. May I stand?”
“Keep your hands where I can see them, and make no sudden moves. I won’t kill you, but I’d hate to remove your arms.”
I believed her when she said that. Lowri was reasonably fond of me, even if we weren’t friends. Plus cutting my arms off would really contaminate the scene. Still, I moved carefully as I straightened, the piece of broken Merry Dancer in my right hand, and turned to face the head of Arden’s guard.
Lowri had traded her customary and ceremonial spear for a proper sword, one which was too close to me for comfort. There were two more guards behind her. I knew neither of them by name. Quentin and Karen were still on the far side of the room, near the door we had entered through. That made me feel a little better. They could duck out if things got bad. Quentin was good enough at navigating the back halls of most knowes that I had faith in his ability to keep them safe, and Tybalt would come to find them, eventually. I trusted him to do that.
“What did you do?” asked Lowri, modifying her question only slightly. Her eyes went to the piece of Merry Dancer in my hand.
Holding it probably made me look guilty, but dropping it was out of the question. It would shatter, and I didn’t know whether that was disrespectful to the Candela, or whether it would be dishonoring his memory. All I could do was hold the empty shell of what he’d been, and hope that I’d be able to talk my way out of the situation.
“I left the dining room when people started shouting,” I said, as calmly as I could. “I took my niece and squire with me, because they’re my responsibility, and as long as that’s the case, I won’t leave them in a room full of angry nobles.” Quentin officially had no title until he left my custodianship. Karen was a changeling whose parents didn’t even serve a noble house. My taking them with me wasn’t just logical, it was practically required. To do anything else would have been to fail in my duties.
“That doesn’t explain why we’ve found you here, standing over the body of a dead king,” said Lowri.
The sc
ent of blackberry flowers and redwood bark teased my nostrils. I relaxed slightly. “We had dinner on the balcony at the end of the adjoining servant’s hall,” I said. “The kitchen staff should be able to confirm that we were fed out there. After we were finished, Sir Grianne of Shadowed Hills came to tell us the conclave was resuming. Since we were on the balcony, we had to come through here to get back to the gallery. Upon entering, I heard a strange noise, and went to investigate. That’s pretty much everything that happened. You found me right after I found him.”
“Found who?” asked Arden.
I turned. Somehow, I didn’t think Lowri was going to stab me for turning toward my queen. “Your Highness,” I said, dropping to one knee. I can be irreverent and resistant to many of the finer points of pureblood etiquette, but some forms can’t be ignored. Reporting the death of a noble is among them. “When the Root and Branch were young, when the Rose still grew unplucked upon the tree; when all our lands were new and green and we danced without care, then, we were immortal. Then, we lived forever.”
I hadn’t said those words in years—not since I’d told the false Queen of the Mists that Evening Winterrose was dead. My head was bowed. I couldn’t see the look on Arden’s face. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to. “We left those lands for the world where time dwells, dancing, that we might see the passage of the sun and the growing of the world. Here we may die, and here we can fall, and here His Highness Antonio Robinson, King of the demesne of Angels, has stopped his dancing.”
He’d stopped his dancing so completely that his body was on the floor not three feet away, motionless, waiting for the night-haunts to come and claim him. As I lifted my head, it was difficult to focus on Arden, and not on the dead body.
She had come alone. That made sense. High King Aethlin and High Queen Maida were probably doing their best to keep the rest of the conclave from getting angry over the apparent disrespect of the missing attendees. Me being late was only to be expected. A king not showing up when he was supposed to? That was the sort of thing that could spark a coup.